We support women writers living and working in the East of England * Winner of Outstanding Contribution to The Arts Award 2018; Shortlisted for the Women In Publishing New Venture Award 2015 & 2016, for Saboteur Best One-Off Event 2015 and Best Anthology 2014 *

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Monday, 28 July 2014

What books will you be reading this summer?
Words And Women organizers, Lynne and Bel, would like to offer some suggestions
from the books they’ve been reading recently. Of course, Words And Women One,
our great anthology published by Unthank Books, is a must but why not one or
all of the following…?

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, published
by Vintage.

A dazzling, panoramic novel about what becomes of early talent, and
the roles that art, money, and even envy can play in close friendships. The
novel follows the fortunes of six teenagers who meet at a summer camp for the
arts the year that Nixon resigns. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but
so much else has changed. This is a brilliant study of character, ambition, class
and friendship.

The Wife by Meg Wolitzer, published by
Vintage.

Written nearly ten years ago it has less scope than The Interestings
but is nevertheless a supremely funny novel about literary greatness,
self-deception and sexual politics. The voice is wonderfully acerbic.

Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music
Boys Boys Boys by Viv Albertine, published by Faber.

Viv Albertine played
guitar in The Slits, one of the great girl punk bands of the 70s. Plenty of
gossip, plenty of atmosphere, plenty of gritty period detail but what makes
this autobiography special is Albertine’s frankness about sex and about what
happens to her after The Slits break up. This is about tenacity and the will to
create and be true to oneself.

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee,
published by Chatto and Windus.

Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) was a great English
writer. Her novels were short, spare masterpieces, self-concealing, oblique and
subtle. She won the Booker Prize for her novel Offshore in 1979, and her last
work, The Blue Flower, was acclaimed as a work of genius. Hermione Lee has done
a superb job, capturing the novelist's elusive personality and telling a
complex, sometimes harrowing story. Fitzgerald didn’t started writing seriously
until after her husband’s death. She was 60 and though she’d achieved a first
at Oxford had spent many years living in penury with her family. So hungry was
she that sometimes her children found her eating blackboard chalk. This too is
a book about tenacity and the will to create.

Tuesday, 1 July 2014

Here is a wonderful short film by Moyses Gomez of our garden festival which took place at The Plantation Gardens, Earlham Road, Norwich on May 24th. See and hear our performers, artists and writers, and watch the day move from showers to sunshine. With many thanks to Moyses, and to everybody who made the day so special.